No doubt if you’ve read any news medium in the past few days, the story of Michael Phelps‘ incredible gold medal run at the Olympics in Beijing. In the U.S. especially, his 8 gold medals is already becoming a legend. In reading about his extreme focus and physical determination I’ve come to the conclusion that I do not have what it takes to reach that level of athleticism. It is just not in me. So what, then, can we mere mortals learn from his - and every other Olympic athlete’s - experiences and successes?

Linda Robertson in an article for the Miami Herald provides great insight:

“Five years ago, when Phelps first plotted his record, it seemed like a presumptuous, wacky fantasy. He was like a baseball player declaring he would break Joe DiMaggio’s 56-game hitting streak. He was like an astronaut declaring he would step foot on Mars.

Once in a while we need someone who doesn’t ask why, but why not?”

Why not? I used to have a sign posted on the walls of my office that said “How can we?” Tired of negative, “we can’t” attitudes, I was trying to change the conversations.

At a recent meeting with one of my FABULOUS South African mentees, she mentioned something they wanted to do by then brushed it off as absurd. We can’t. I of course asked the question: why not? She thought about it for a minute. Yes, why not? We proceeded to work through the question and found at the end that it was, indeed something they could consider doing. We even mapped out a plan of how to do it.

So my challenge to you this week, this month, this year is to listen to yourself. If and when you find yourself saying “We can’t” change the dialog. Think in terms of “How can we?” and see what opportunities emerge.

Have you ever dreamed or even considered starting your own business? Do you know you want to be an entrepreneur but maybe haven’t found that killer idea or unique business proposition yet? If so, the ACTiVATE program may be for you and we are actively recruiting potential women entrepreneurs for the Class of 2008.

Don’t worry if you don’t have an idea for a business - that is part of what we help you with! We provide you with lists of technologies (patents and copyrights) from Maryland Universities and government labs which are available for licensing. Then, we take you through the licensing and commercialization process with the hopeful outcome that you will launch your own business at the end of the program (or before, as the case has been!).

I am going on my 4th year with the program and my 3rd as the Lead Instructor. I can honestly say I have never seen ANYTHING LIKE IT. First, it is taught and led by seasoned entrepreneurs who offer their practical experience with a no-holds-barred approach to sharing the good, the bad, and the ugly. You get the opportunity to learn from our mistakes and build on our successes. Second, this is a HANDS ON program, where we measure success by your success in starting and building a viable, sustainable business. Third, the cadre of women who have gone through ACTiVATE, many of whom have started their own business as a result of the program, provides a support and networking group that is unparalleled in their experience, connections and desire to help each other succeed.

Additionally, the program is financially supported by TEDCO and receives assistance from a community of active volunteer advisors in all areas of business and entrepreneurship (including potential investors!) who all want to see you get your business off the ground. Never before has such an ensemble of guidance and support been assembled for the purpose of seeing you achieve your dreams! The testimonials from past participants says it all!

ABOUT ACTiVATE
ACTiVATE is a year-long program being offered for a 4th year at UMBC in Baltimore, Maryland. We are currently recruiting seasoned (i.e. not right out of school) women with either a technical (IT, bio tech, engineering) background or strong business experience to interview for possible acceptance into our next class which starts in February 2008.

If you are interested, attend one of our upcoming open houses to learn more about the program or go to our website and send in your application!

A couple of things I wanted to share tonight…

I found Family Matters Radio on the internet and after listening to a couple of interviews by Caroline and Jacquie, I just knew I wanted to talk with these dynamic women! We had a fun conversation - check out our radio interview (scroll down to the audio portion)…

I’ve also been participating in a lot of interviews lately which have recently landed on Nielsen’s Small Business Resource Center, Entrepreneur Magazine, and even my home-town Baltimore Sun! Check out Make Your Marketing Plan Matter along with all the other great small-business resources they have there as well as Small Businesses Can Make Performance Reviews Positive Experiences. I was able to get a book mention in Entrepreneur magazine story called The Brighter Side: Transforming a Negative Experience into a Positive Business Idea (sounds like me, doesn’t it!?), but I am looking forward to seeing the quote in print (it looks small on the internet!). As the list keeps growing, keep checking on my Press page to see what’s new.

There was a lot of good stuff that didn’t make it into the articles so I am guessing I am going to have to expand on these in the future…

This week my friend, Wendy Piersall, posted a guest blog entry from me on her Enterpreneur.com blog called The Entrepreneurial Conundrum. Check it out and digg it if you find value in it!

For those of my friends in the United States, Thanksgiving provides a time for us to reflect on what we are thankful for. A recent e-mail from a woman in upstate New York really brought that home for me.

Erin contacted me earlier this week looking for help with her business idea. She has a vision of an organic plush toy line that will be eventually expanded to include bedding products. In talking about what is needed to get her business off the ground, she broke down and revealed to me that they were drowning in debt and couldn’t see how she could finance her start-up. Not an unusual story unfortunately. But it is a little different for her. Her 3-year-old son (the youngest one in the photo) was diagnosed with Leukemia a little less than a year ago. A couple months later, her 8-year-old son was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. Each of those are tough to handle alone, I can’t imagine dealing with both in succession.

She’s come to realize over the past year how precious the time with her three sons is. Erin’s goals for her business is to build something she and her kids can be proud of, but work that will also enable her to be more available for them. Starting a business to take control of your life…does that sound familiar to anyone else?

Those of you who know me, know what my first thought was – “how can I help?” Because I have been burned before – and hundreds of stories of scams float around on the internet – I knew I had to verify that this wasn’t one of them. I asked for copies of the medical bills and Erin quickly complied. She isn’t trying to scam anyone…she is just trying to get on with her life after a series of unfortunate events.

My immediate response to Erin’s story was one of thanks. I am thankful for all of the blessings I have received: I am healthy, my children are healthy and we have a nice home. Truly, we have everything we need. That thought alone compels me to give back in the spirit of thanks.

I am working with Erin to set up an account with a local church so that those of you who feel the need to help like I do have a way to donate to her cause. Please e-mail me if you’re interested in helping and I hope to post the information on how you can help soon!

I am sitting here watching one of my all-time favorite movies “A League of their Own.” In addition to being really funny, it has some great quotes to inspire entrepreneurs and other success-driven people.

• To achieve the incredible you have to attempt the impossible. Wow - SOOO true! How many times do we let the obstacles keep us from even starting something?
• There’s no crying in baseball. I love this one, too. It’s OK to have a pity party, but at times you need some tough love. My equivalent to some of the women entrepreneurs I work with is “put your big girl panties on and deal with it!” Same thing although coming from Tom Hanks it does sound a little better.
• It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, anyone could do it. It’s the hard that makes it great. Bingo. Building a business is hard. Achieving your dreams is hard. But that is what makes the accomplishment all the sweeter. Remember that next time you reach a gut-check or it gets too hard. How bad do you want it?

The added bonus of this movie for me is it was the last movie I watched with my dad a week before he died. The cancer had moved to his brain and he had trouble understanding subtle humor, but the outright funny scenes and one-liners in this movie made him laugh. To this day, it makes me laugh and cry - sometimes at the same time. What a great gift.

My bank, Mercantile Potomac, was recently purchased by PNC bank and switched over this past weekend. Prior to the change, PNC did a great job of providing information about their programs, terms, and services, which I read thoroughly. And thank goodness I did. There were some details in there that can bite any small business owner.

My previous business account had a fairly fast turnaround on deposits. We had been a long-time client, so even large deposits over $50,000 were generally not held and were available in our account immediately. In reading the terms of my new account, I discovered that all out-of-state deposits over $50,000 will be held for 4 days. 4 DAYS. When you’re churning cash pretty fast and working to make payroll as clients push out how long it takes them to pay their bills, 4 days is a long time! That small detail alone could result in heavy overdraft charges. If you’re smart, you at least have a line of credit available to cover you, but having to draw on that unexpectedly is never good.

The bottom line is to make sure if you’re not watching the details, someone in your company is and making the appropriate plans for dealing with them.

A study released this month by the SBA is called “Are Male and Female Entrepreneurs Really That Different?” and poses some very interesting points.

According to the study, gender does not affect new venture performance. That’s refreshing to hear and about what I would have expected. What caught me off guard is that it appears the differences in women entrepreneurs’ preferences, motivation, and expectations accounted for the discrepancy in what they deemed business success. The good news is if a woman decides she wants to start and grow her business and is willing to do what it takes to get there, there is no reason she can’t. The bad news is (and I am not sure that this is necessarily bad) women don’t seem to go into business with high expectations.

One of the other interesting factors brought out in the report is the different reasons men and women start businesses. The study found that men are more likely to list making money as one of their top reasons for starting a business while flexibility was among tops for women. From what I have seen, that does not mean that women are not interested in making money. Rather, we see our business as perhaps more holistic than just a financial opportunity. In many cases, I have observed that many women are also lacking the confidence or the tools they need to build a business, which is what drove my targeting The ParentPreneur Edge at women entrepreneurs.

I find it interesting, too, that the SBA survey seemed to focus on venture size among other things as an indicator of success. I have issue with that – is high growth and more zeroes the only measure of accomplishment? It isn’t all about size. Most women business owners I work with view their businesses much broader than that. For them, it is about building something bigger than them as well as providing a positive impact on customers, employees, and the community. Making a decent living is certainly in there as well, but it isn’t usually ego-driven big for big’s sake. Perhaps it is time to broaden our perspective and look at a more universal definition of business success.

Ultimately what I took away from this report is that women can do it if they so choose. We can go out there and build high-growth businesses, get funded, and reach what others might deem success. But is that what we want to do? If so, then according to this study women have the same chances to be successful as men, though I suspect some women would argue that they still see barriers. According to the research, however, success by traditional and strictly financial definitions may not be what all women want.

Take a look at the full report and let me know what you think!

For the past three years, we have had the gas stations on our route to the beach all scoped out. We knew which towns along the way had the cheapest gas and planned our trips accordingly. This summer, we were surprised to see that the town where we had previously stopped for the cheapest gas was now among the highest and the one that had been the highest was the cheapest. What happened? A new low-cost provider had come to the ‘expensive’ town, driving all the other stations to drop their prices. I am not sure what happened in the previously least expensive town…maybe they just failed to keep up.

What we saw with the gas prices reminded me of what
happens so often in business. Just when we think we have the market all figured out, it changes. This is true for big businesses and small businesses alike. It happened to me in my former company. One time it was a move by a competitor that made us change our plans but more often it was other unexpected events that altered the market landscape and, as a result, our business. We learned the hard way we had to constantly keep our eye on what was going on outside of our business. In one instance, we had generated a marketing strategy for our newly-developed software but put the plan on the shelf because we got too busy with paying customers. By the time we dusted the business plan off 18 months later, the market had changed markedly and we had to start over again with a new strategy. Thankfully we noticed the changes in the industry before we had spent too much money on our original plan otherwise we would have lost a lot more than time (and few hundred dollars). What we experienced is not uncommon. We entrepreneurs get so busy IN our business we don’t have time to work ON our business. And just when we think we have it all figured out, something changes!

In the case of buying gas on our vacation it only cost us a couple dollars more but in our business, how much larger can the risk be when you don’t pay attention to the changes around you and your business?

A recent study shows that female entrepreneurs are far less likely than their male counterparts to seek angel financing even though the percentage of women owned businesses actually getting funded is not significantly lower than businesses owned by men. In essence, women are not finding angels because they’re not seeking them. So what gives?

One of the authors of the study suggests that perhaps women don’t go to angels because there are so few women angels (a topic that deserves its own discussion!) and we prefer to work with like-minded people. In some ways, I can see his point. Through my past 2+ years of experience helping women to become entrepreneurs through ACTiVATE, I have seen that in general, women do prefer to work with people they are comfortable with. Getting to know a potential business partner on a personal level seems more important to women than to men.

I have other theories that I have developed over the years of working with (and being!) a women entrepreneur as to why women aren’t seeking outside capital to grow their businesses:

1. Women don’t like to ask for help or don’t know where to go for it. There are many of us who feel like we don’t need help…we’ll figure it out. We see asking for help as ‘weak.’ On the other side, so many people I talk to seem to struggle finding the right resources to help them build their concept into a viable business.

2. Many women start businesses for flexibility and control and resist outside assistance that might disrupt that. Taking money from someone to grow a business requires a willingness to give up some control, or at a minimum welcomes outside scrutiny of our efforts. What will an outside investor say if I decide not to go after a big contract because I want to control my growth for personal reasons?

3. They don’t think BIG enough. Prior to starting and growing my business, I just never thought I had the personal or financial resources to consider buying someone else’s business. Perhaps it was a confidence thing. Once I started to see what I could do I started to think “why can’t I?” I began to think bigger. When we were researching our second business, gluten-free snack foods, we even considered buying someone else’s manufacturing facility when we couldn’t find someone to co-manufacture our product and guarantee a wheat/dairy free facility. Five years earlier, that thought would not even have crossed my mind.

So what has stopped you for looking for outside funding? Don’t know how? And if you’re doing it, what do you see as barriers (if any!)? What’s missing?!